PROVIDENCE — After bowing to heated opposition from a group of townspeople and local elected officials to its proposal to bring an underwater electrical cable from Block Island to the Narragansett Town...

PROVIDENCE — After bowing to heated opposition from a group of townspeople and local elected officials to its proposal to bring an underwater electrical cable from Block Island to the Narragansett Town Beach, Deepwater Wind has set its sights on another beach in Narragansett, this one state-owned.

The Providence-based company planning a five-turbine wind farm in waters near Block Island is working to secure an agreement with the state Department of Environmental Management that would allow it to bury the transmission cable under Scarborough State Beach and then connect it to the regional power grid.

The State Properties Committee was set to consider at its meeting on Thursday whether to approve an easement agreement that would allow the cable to travel under an area north of the beach complex, but the item was taken off the agenda late Tuesday at the request of the DEM, according to a spokeswoman for the state agency. The request was made after opponents of the Deepwater project and the media started asking questions about the proposal on Tuesday.

Deepwater CEO Jeffrey Grybowski said the item should not have been on the agenda in the first place, as negotiations with the DEM were still ongoing. He said the decision to take it off the committee’s agenda had nothing to do with the inquiries from the public.

The proposal to use Scarborough Beach follows Deepwater’s announcement on Aug. 5 that it was dropping a plan to make landfall at the town beach after residents had banded together in opposition, raising concerns that cable construction could damage local tourism. The company said it would look for a more appropriate site.

At a meeting hours after Deepwater announced that decision, the Narragansett Town Council voted to deny the company any easements to use the town beach.

In recent weeks, Council President James Callaghan had heard rumors that Deepwater would target Scarborough or some other piece of state-owned land for the cable project but he didn’t hear anything formally until early this week after notice of the State Properties Committee meeting was posted.

“I didn’t think they were going to give up,” he said in an interview. “State property seemed the way to go since this project had been approved by the state.”

Deepwater beat out six other firms in 2008 to become the state’s preferred developer of offshore wind power. The firm is planning the Block Island wind farm as a demonstration project before installing up to 200 turbines in federal waters in Rhode Island Sound. The company won a federal auction in July for leasing rights for the larger project.

The cable is vital to the wind farm that would be built in state waters about three miles southeast of Block Island. On most days, the 30-megawatt wind farm would generate much more electricity than Block Island could use. The excess would be sent via the underwater cable to mainland rate-payers. When the wind isn’t blowing, electricity from the regional power grid would travel over the line to the island.

Under the new proposal, made public by Deepwater late Tuesday, the cable would travel 18 miles underwater from Block Island to Scarborough. It would make landfall between two storm water outflow pipes north of the main beach area and the two pavilions there.

“From our perspective, that’s a good spot because it’s already a utility area,” said Grybowski, referring to the storm water pipes.

The cable would be buried in a reinforced pipe at least 10 feet under the sand and continue underneath Ocean Road to a state-owned parking lot. From there, Deepwater would bury lines under Burnside Avenue to Route 108 and then to a lot near Route 1 that is owned by the state Department of Transportation and is currently used to store road salt. The company would build a 20-foot-tall building to house equipment there. The lines would continue on to a substation in the Wakefield section of South Kingstown operated by utility National Grid.

Because the lines would be buried under state property, Grybowski doesn’t expect the project would need any approvals from the Town of Narragansett. If the easement were approved, it would be included in Deepwater’s overall application package to the state Coastal Resources Management Council, the lead permitting agency for the wind farm proposal.

The new cable plan would be more expensive than the old one because a longer stretch of the power line would be buried under roadways. It could add $1 million to $2 million to the $60-million cost of the cable project that Deepwater will pay, said Grybowski.

The State Properties Committee meeting, which was posted on Sunday, was originally scheduled for Tuesday. It was postponed until Thursday because it was not properly advertised, said Ron Renaud, chairman of the committee.

An agenda made no mention of Deepwater or the cable. Although a memorandum to the committee dated Aug. 30 from DEM director Janet Coit says the easement would be for the cable, it did not name Deepwater. Renaud said no other paperwork was filed in support of the agreement.

Both documents list the DEM and Narragansett Electric as parties to the proposed agreement. National Grid, which owns Narragansett Electric, has agreed to buy power from the wind farm and has indicated an interest in eventually owning the cable, but a spokesman said it has no involvement in the easement agreement.

That agreement, said David Graves, would be signed by Deepwater, and, if all goes according to plan, only later be transferred to National Grid.

“We have no signed agreement to seek an easement,” he said. “Long term, it’s likely that we will own and operate the cable, at which point we’ll take over the easement.”

Grybowski said National Grid was listed in error on the documents submitted to the properties committee.

Opponents of Deepwater’s plan raised concerns about a lack of information given to the committee. Former Rhode Island Attorney General James O’Neill, a Narragansett resident who opposes the Deepwater project, also questioned how the item was advertised.

O’Neill and other opponents sent letters to state officials requesting that the matter be postponed.

“What surprised me is that the agenda item didn’t identify that Deepwater is the party that will benefit from this,” O’Neill said.